Supercars as Sales Builders

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 10, 6:38AM EDT

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Almost no one will buy a new Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) F-150 SVT Raptor Special Edition, which has special seats, a good sound system and a nice paint job. It is a pickup truck that gets 13 MPG and costs up to $60,000 — as much as many BMWs. Ultimately, however, like any pickup it is good for hauling dirt. That has not kept Ford, and almost every other car company, from producing models no one will buy, perhaps as a magnet to pull consumers into showrooms. Once there, these people can buy the $30,000 F-150, a much more practical model.

The auto company marketing ploy of producing supercars as a way to entice consumer interest is nothing new. Cadillac sells a version of its mainstay CTS that has a 556 hp engine that will run from 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds. Most people cannot even hold a car like that on the road, unless they have been trained as professional drivers. And the Cadillac CTS-V sells for nearly $70,000. The base model of the same cars sells for less than $40,000. Almost anyone can drive that model of the car, and it comes with leather seats.

Whether supercars are an effective way to lure customers to certain brands is not something that the general public or media know. Auto manufacturers have enough sense to keep that to themselves. Either these company do not want competitors to know about an effective measure to create sales, or the special models are a waste of design and R&D budgets, and a costly waste of product development time.

Even the most high-end car companies offer cars for dreamers or the exceeding rich. BMW has a new ultra-fast model called the M6 Gran Coupe. For $115,000, anyone can own one. And, for an extra $6,500, the car comes with a heated steering wheel, a power rear sunshade and high beams that light up on their own.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.